1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to planned maintenance and diagnosis of office or domestic appliances (such as photocopiers), and more particularly, to remote diagnosis of appliances via a network, involving a remote maintenance and diagnosis apparatus and a client terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various appliances, such as photocopiers, printers, or facsimile machines, are used in offices and houses. There are two types of maintenance of these appliances. One method is that a customer asks for repair when he finds something wrong with his/her appliance, without periodic (or planned) inspection. The other method is that the customer makes a contract with the manufacturer or the service provider to conduct periodic inspection and maintenance. In the latter case, a service person visits the office or the customer's house every few months, for example, to check the operability of the appliance.
In recent years, machines and apparatuses have been furnished with self-diagnosis functions along with the progress in functionalities and capabilities. If some trouble or malfunction (including failures and abnormal conditions) occurd in a machine, the machine itself detects the fault and makes a call to the service call center.
Meanwhile, as the types and the structure of machines and apparatus become diversified and complicated, maintenance services have been more and more specialized, and it has become difficult to keep qualified service persons. Actually, automatic inspection and maintenance by the machine itself are often more reliable than those done by service persons.
In spite of the fact that the rate of trouble occurring in machines is decreasing owing to the improved functionalities, highly specialized maintenance and inspection are still necessary, resulting in increased maintenance cost and time. In fact, such maintenance and inspection have to be conducted by service persons at a regular interval. If the time interval to the next inspection is long, machine trouble is likely to occur due to lack of precautionary measures.